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Fact Check: Will smelter closing reduce the ammunition supply?

Times-Union readers want to know:

I received an email that President Barack Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency shut down the nation’s last lead smelting plant as part of a “back door gun control” plan to reduce the supply of ammunition. Is this just another attempt to take away rights of gun owners?

The Doe Run Co. did close its main smelting plant in Herculaneum, Mo., on Dec. 31 because it decided it would be too expensive to install upgrades to meet new EPA standards, according to media reports.

But that’s about the only thing that’s accurate in this viral email.

The closing of the plant has its origins in a 2004 lawsuit filed against the EPA by the Missouri Coalition for the Environment, according to FactCheck.org, a fact-finding project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Missouri group argued that the EPA had failed its responsibility under the Clean Air Act to review and revise, if needed, the air quality standards for lead every five years. In 2005, a U.S. District Court in Missouri agreed and ordered the EPA to conduct such a review, giving the agency until September 2008 to comply, FactCheck.org reported.

In October 2008, the EPA adopted a tough new emission standard, which the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported was “10 times more stringent than the old standard for lead, a toxic metal known to impair neurological development in children.”

In 2010, the company announced that it would close the Herculaneum plant as part of an agreement with the EPA that included a $3.5 million penalty on the company for many years of air emissions, lead dust in homes and elevated levels of the metal in yards and children’s blood. The company also agreed to pay $7.5 million toward environmental projects, the Post-Dispatch reported.

Doe Run said in the announcement that the Herculaneum smelter was scheduled to close anyway in 2016, but would close by the end of 2013.

The Post-Dispatch wrote a story on Oct. 16 about how the closing of the plant would impact employees. Conservative bloggers then posted theories on why the plant was closing and the effect it would have on gun owners.

FactCheck.org reported that one of those posts, by Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, appeared on Oct. 29 on NoisyRoom.net and Right Wing News under the headline, “Back Door Gun Control Moves Forward.” A week or so later, the New American published an article with the headline, “EPA Closure of Last Lead Smelting Plant to Impact Ammunition Production.” It claimed that “recent actions taken against the country’s last lead smelting facility will affect the right to keep and bear arms.”

At first, the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action, added fuel to the fire by saying in a blog, “Whatever the EPA’s motivation when creating the new lead air quality standard, increasingly restrictive regulation of lead is likely to affect the production and cost of traditional ammunition.”

But when ammunition suppliers objected, FactCheck.org reported, the NRA-ILA posted another piece on Dec. 5 with the headline: “U.S. Ammunition Industry to Survive Closure of Lead Smelter.”

The NRA-ILA said the lead used to make ammunition mostly comes from recycled lead, which will still be smelted in the United States at secondary smelters.

The article also linked to two ammunition manufacturers, which said the plant closing wouldn’t have any impact on their business or on the nation’s ammunition supply.

ATK Sporting Group also discounted another rumor contained in the viral email that the Department of Homeland Security and military entities are buying excessive quantities of ammunition, thereby restricting availability to the commercial market, FactCheck.org reported.

“Simply stated, this is a false and baseless claim,” ATK stated. “In fact, we do supply the DHS with a small percentage of ammunition in select calibers consistent with our contractual requirements. However, the commercial market receives the vast majority of ammunition produced to serve the needs of civilian hunters and shooting sports enthusiasts.”

Here are the bottom lines:

The Doe Run plant was slated for closing in 2016, but closed at the end of 2013 because of the impact of a new lead emissions standard. But the viral email is wrong to claim that Obama and the EPA collaborated to force the plant to close by changing the air quality standard. The EPA lowered the air quality standard in October 2008 during the Bush administration — not under Obama.

The email also incorrectly states that the Herculaneum plant is the “last lead smelting plant in the U.S.” That plant is Doe Run’s last primary U.S. smelter, but it and other companies operate secondary lead smelting plants, FactCheck.org found. Primary plants use mined resources, while secondary plants use recycled materials, such as lead batteries.

And the National Rifle Association said recycled lead “is the type most often used by ammunition manufacturers,” and the plant closing “should not have the dramatic impact that some have predicted.”